John Manuel's boss once called him a 30,000 foot thinker living in a thousand foot job. Then a merger turned him from a manager of a few people into a director overnight, with temps to onboard and no leadership training to lean on. John, VP of commercial operations and merchandising at Puris Foods, walks through what he learned about promotion, delegation, and turning strategy into work a team can actually execute.

Guest: John Manuel is VP of commercial operations and merchandising at Puris Foods, with a career that includes General Mills, Miller Milling, and Dryland Genetics, and firsthand experience stepping up from manager to director to VP.

In this episode:

• 00:59 - Kent's welcome and John's introduction
• 02:28 - John's career path, from agricultural rail cars to pea proteins
• 07:31 - Why a promotion is a new job, not a reward for the old one
• 11:40 - "30,000 foot person" feedback and the pull toward execution
• 20:11 - Manager to director overnight during a merger
• 26:03 - Running to something instead of from something
• 29:06 - What separates the VP level from director, and the "but" rule
• 35:05 - Delegation, vulnerability, and John's three pillars
• 39:24 - Turning strategy into execution with OKRs
• 43:41 - Advice for aspiring leaders and newly promoted VPs

Resources mentioned:

• High Output Management by Andy Grove (search for this)
• The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey (search for this)
• The Eisenhower Matrix (search for this)
• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) framework

Links for today's show:

• John Manuel on LinkedIn
• Puris Foods website [PLACEHOLDER, add link if you want it]
• Kent Kniebel on LinkedIn
• The Promoted Leader Toolkit

Music for this podcast comes from a live recording of the song Needle & Thread and is provided with permission by Pert' Near Sandstone. Check them out on pertnearsandstone.com and on all major streaming platforms.

Enjoyed the episode? Leave a rating and review wherever you listen, it helps more leaders find the show.

One of the things I say in my intros and when I talk to my employees and really think of it as a personal philosophy in my life, I have these three big pillars that I think are really important to any conversation you're having is I want to always be a good listener first, because I think if you are a good listener, people are going to talk to you.

And then truly active listening so you can understand people's problems, understand where you can add value and all that is a super important setup to the third and most important pillar, which is executing on that value add with clarity and transparency and follow through.

And I'm usually really honest when I give that speech and say I struggle with that third part, as I think most people do.

But I also want to be like the most honest guy in the room about my struggles there and call me out and hold me accountable as well, too.

And I think from the top, that really helps to drive that culture of accountability.

Hi there, and welcome to the Step up podcast.

I'm your host, Kent Knievel.

Every week I talk to experts who focus on helping leaders step up their leadership game and leaders telling their stories of growing up through the ranks.

If you're new to the show, do me a favor and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

One last thing.

As a leadership development consultant and executive coach, focus area of mine is supporting newly promoted leaders.

One in three promotions fail because we never teach newly minted VPs how to stop being a director or a newly promoted director how to stop being a manager.

That's you.

Or if you support a leader who has been recently promoted, I encourage you to visit my website at Kent Coach Toolkit and download a free copy of the Promoted Leader Toolkit filled with practical advice and tools to help new leaders stick the landing and truly step up to their new leadership level.

All right, I've deleted and dallied long enough.

On with the show.

Welcome, everybody.

Today we have another leader interview.

I'm very excited about this.

With me today, I have John Manuel.

He's the vice president of commercial operations and merchandising at Puris Foods.

John, thanks for agreeing to come on the podcast today.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Ken.

Great to be here.

So I always like to start these with, you know, give me the quick career snapshot, like just kind of walk us through.

You know, obviously this podcast is about leadership.

So you can either start it there or wherever you want, Give us kind of the.

The quick and dirty overview, and then we'll probably dig in on a few Things.

Yeah.

I'll give you the quick high level overview and try not to make it long because it's a bit of a meandering journey.

But I went to school for in marketing and advertising.

When I got out of school I did have a family connection to agricultural food business.

But like loosely through I knew my father did something with that and it sounded really boring to me.

So I thought boy, I really don't want to end up doing that.

After looking at a few opportunities of unpaid internships at Marketing World, I actually ended up taking a short term stint with my father's business partner who did a very different business in brokering agricultural hopper cars.

And she was a market innovator.

Launched this separate sort of private third party market and really started out of a need from the industry and had never been on a vacation.

So I stepped in to feel like a short two week role while she was going to go on vacation for her first time ever.

And in that two weeks I really fell in love with the industry and had a better understanding of what it was and just stayed there for five years.

And it was exciting and interesting but definitely a dial for dollars type of role and not ultimately what I wanted to do.

And I got really interested about what are these customers of min and wanted to learn how to trade and move commodities around like my customers were doing.

And so when an opportunity came at General Mills they were looking for somebody young and interested in that sort of thing.

For me to move into that type of role I had to make a tough decision to leave a family business and go take a role at a great company.

From there I went from a three person company to a 35,000 person one.

But a lot of great learnings in a short amount of time and a little bit of a trial by fire model and then but really learned this is an industry I wanted to be in and was really curious about flour milling and everything around commodity trading.

So an opportunity through another customer of mine, which is a theme of my career, led me to jump to Miller Milling, which is a local company in Minneapolis headquartered here and probably one of the larger ones that people don't haven't heard of or know.

And that was a 10 year career there where I started as really a trading sort of enforcing manager, helping them upscale a small company as they were being acquired by a big corporation and multiple promotions across that company.

So as we talk more through promotions and what it means to promote up during leadership, a lot of my references may come from that career as well.

And then I had A real choice and opportunity at the end of that decade to really say, is this where I want to be long term or is it time to step out and explore more and chase some opportunities for growth?

So I did that.

I went to a true startup at Dryland Genetics, which was a great experience, but startups don't always hit perfectly.

So a year later I took another role with a customer who I was working with at Dryland Genetics.

And the day I took that role, I was also began conversations with peers where I'm at now at the same time and really my, my career at Miller Milling, everything I learned along the way made me a perfect fit for this role in sort of end to end management of small niche commodities.

Doing what we do here at Puris with peas and pea proteins and pea products for pet food and human nutrition industry.

Cool.

Nice.

Well, okay, so hearing a bit more about your journey, knowing you live in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, knowing that you were in commodity trading, how did you avoid Cargill and not how, how's that not on your resume?

Great question.

You can never fully avoid that.

I suppose they're probably involved all that to be safe.

They are an important partner actually in Pierce.

So they are on the board and involved quite deeply with Puris here in this role.

And certainly I have quite a few colleagues, friends, people who have either been there are still there and moved around, but between Cargill, General Mills.

Yeah, it's hard to avoid one of the two and sometimes both.

So yeah, I've touched one directly and the other one pretty indirectly, but pretty darn close.

Yeah, funny.

Yeah.

Oh, I was gonna, I was gonna say, yeah, they, they probably are somewhere in the supply chain even if you haven't worked for them directly for sure.

They are the largest private company in the world, I think, or at least one or two there.

I think they're involved in agriculture.

Yeah.

And yeah, certainly they do big at scale really well.

And I think my career, as I further gotten into it is really, I've developed sort of a skill at understanding how do you take some of those big egg principles, distill them down into what wins in smaller scale or niche businesses.

And then also how can you be agile and nimble at small scale and do things that companies like Cargill can't and move at a speed that perhaps they can't always do.

And so I think that's really where I found a great home here at Pierce and where I've learned across this spectrum of companies I've worked for, really the size of company That I like a mid size, fast growing market disruptor type company.

That's really where I find my bread and butter.

So what first brought you into leadership and how kind of how did you know?

Yeah, how did that happen?

I think it's always an interesting conundrum and paradox for every company thinking about leaders and how they view promotion.

But there's always this, this piece of you take somebody who is performing well in execution roles and then level them up.

And I think that's something I'll touch on later, I imagine when we talk about it too.

But I think there's always this understanding that like, ooh, this promotion was a reward for my performance.

Sure, possibly.

But really what you're doing is being tasked to take on a very different skillset to perform a very different job and say can you take what you've done in execution and teach it and coach it to others and level up as you go?

And so I think that's what I've always found interesting.

And I think for me, what gives leaders confidence in promoting you is not always just your execution too, but where they see your ability to maybe take that next step and take that next leap.

And honestly, for me, sometimes I tend to be a big level strategic thinker who has done a little better the higher I've moved compared to a peer execution role because I usually can get bored quickly with execution and want to think of the next thing and have a very curious mind and always want to learn something new.

So I think leaders I've worked for have been fortunate enough for ones who were able to give me grace at times and where I struggle in execution and also see the potential.

But I think for any advice I give to a lot of young people as well too is you have to show that potential and you have to show it by being curious and being interested and seeing the forest for the trees.

Even in your own small execution world, you definitely need to keep your scope narrow, focus on execution.

That's what your managers are requiring from you, needing from you.

But you also have to be inquisitive enough to ask the right next question, see the big picture for what it is.

And I think that's stuff outside of your job description is really where the great leaders see it and see it.

And that's where you, you as an employee can like put your pins on the board for potential and truly do it in a. I'm doing this because I'm actually curious and want to understand the business.

Not I'm trying to show you that I'm ready.

I think especially good leaders can kind of sniff the title chaser from somebody who really has the ability to level up skill and perform and then big bet on people of whether they can coach.

And I feel especially in corporate world, it's hard to get opportunities to show that or to prove that you have that skill before you get there.

Yeah, yeah, that's a really, that's a really good point.

Right.

There's some, but few.

Right.

It kind of depends on like do you have this opportunity to maybe and depending on the company too.

Right.

I know General Mills is a good example.

You worked there too, where they usually task someone pre manager level to manage interns, for example.

Or you know, you can sometimes get some leadership experience on projects or volunteer opportunities.

But by and large even those can only prepare you so much for the very first, that very first management job which tends to be the hardest.

Right.

And I don't.

It's not necessarily by design.

Right.

It's just, you know, we don't, the royal, we don't like design that job to be the hardest.

It just so happens that the, you know, the closer you are to execution, it's just the harder that transition is.

But I also heard you say, right that like you're saying like you found increasing success at higher level roles given the strategic thinking needs.

Right.

At.

At the higher levels.

I guess I'm curious if I'm summarizing that correctly to say like, not that you were obvious, obviously you can't have been terrible as a frontline supervisor or you never would have grown.

But it sounds like you found more success at the upper level where this sort of strategic and vision setting influence needs have been stronger.

Yeah, I had a few great bosses along the way and different bosses are great in different way.

And I think this is the thing I also tell young employees too, as you know every manager, you tend to want to put them on a pedestal.

But it's kind of like your parents that the more you work with them, you're going to realize they have faults like every other human.

So I, it can be very easy to be frustrated with managers over their faults.

But I think it's very important as a curious mind to bunch up what they're good at.

When I had a. I won't name names by one of my first false names when I made my move to Miller Milling was very tough, very demanding.

Really taught me about man, they're the higher standard you can go set and push and drive for.

And I had to really check myself to at times to be like, I can choose to be upset about that or I can also lean in to what he's telling me.

And he's got years of experience and he's been successful in his years.

If I want my journey to look more like his, I need to focus on what I can learn versus complain about what I don't like.

And one of the things he told me, and it's something that has stuck with me forever, is I was asking really tough, challenging my questions myself about should we do this, should we do this?

Why aren't we approaching this as a business?

And he pause me mid one on one and said, John, I just want to stop for a second to be like this conversation was about where your performance was at on this day to day execution and you're pivoting to my job.

And it feels a little bit more like a one on one for me.

And he's like, at the end of the day, John, you are definitely a 30,000 foot person.

You can see the forest from the trees.

You get the big picture.

And I need you to trust me that all those things you're highlighting are being worked on.

But I also need you to realize you're living in a thousand foot world.

Right?

Like I'm super happy that I know now that you know that and that you can think that fast and think that big level.

And I want to tap that and your manager when there's opportunities to.

But also this stuff in your role's got to get done first.

And I think that was, I was pretty young in my career, a few years at General Mills, was feeling excited to go to this new company and trying to just break through walls.

And a little bit of it was like, yes, and you're in this execution role and execution has to be done.

And so that's something I keep reminding myself over and over throughout my career because I think everywhere in mid level management, as you grow from manager to director to vice president, there's always pieces of execution that have got to get done.

And more and more in today's world leaders are being asked to be coach and player, right?

And so I think really riding that balance of making sure the execution is done, remind your executor that the execution has to get done.

And yes, we all see these problems, but then problems as an idea guy isn't really helpful to anyone.

You have to like bring a problem and a solution and be willing to drive leadership potential to go work on that project to get done and turn those ideas into execution.

And so I think Hearing that early on in my career, I think at the time I heard it and I was frustrated and I look back on that now and I'm like, that's probably one of the most important things I heard.

Yeah.

In my career.

And I think as my, my lens on that has definitely changed.

Yeah.

Interesting.

So what was, you know, as, as you're thinking bigger and you know, longer timelines, lower down the leadership pipeline.

What was, you know, and you're getting this feedback that like appreciate it, need you to focus, you know, kind of almost like stay in your lane sort of kind of conversation.

Conversation.

So yeah.

And it was, yeah, like I want you to do this, this big picture stuff and go solve that.

But like we also need to know you can solve the problem that's specifically on your plate and no one else is going to touch.

So it was a refocus thing, I would say.

Yeah.

So what was the hard, you know, when you think about, you know, at, at every stage in leadership, you both have to unlearn things.

Right.

That, that you know, or even stop doing things that you were doing at the previous level and learn what you need to do at the new level.

But as you think back to that sort of, you know, first series of leadership roles, kind of lower level leadership roles, what were some of the hardest things you had to first learn?

Especially if your sights were kind of in your thinking was sort of maybe already at the next level.

Yeah, I think, really, I think it's a, a bit of a wake up call every leader goes through when they make that change.

Is okay, I've had my refocusing conversation on execution and now I'm stepping up and I'm leading a small team.

I think it's understanding what it really takes to get that small team to execute.

While you've got day to day execution as well too.

And the hardest part is almost never really the day to day execution.

Right.

A lot of times it's just really understanding do I have the staff skills and systems in place for these people to all reach their full potential.

I'm definitely a curious person and I view every role as a new challenge and a new opportunity to learn, a new opportunity to become an expert at something.

So when I became a leader, I did want to lean into leadership stuff, leadership ideas and high output management.

I'm blanking on the gentleman's name, but from Dell who wrote the book on it.

And I think it's just a super simple framework to understand of really understanding that the output of your employees is the output of you.

Especially now when you step into that first leadership role.

Leaders hire up in the company.

Execution of your team is important, the results are important.

But what they're really looking from is, are affecting the team on the ground to achieve more than they have before.

That's how you're going to be measured as a leader.

You can say my individual P and L was great but it's despite these employees or I've got an issue here.

And I think often early leaders can lean on talking to HR or talking to their next leader of saying this person's wrong.

But I think all those things about like how do we go make the fixed is a moot point if you haven't done the work yourself as a leader to say okay, I've got an employee who's really good at this skill.

Do I have them in the right role and responsibility?

Can we ship that?

Is the work on the right plates and are we setting everybody else up to everybody on the team up to really lean into their potential versus making those, those tough choices.

And I think it can be really difficult especially when employees below you might have on their individual development path.

Oh, I really want this thing that I know I'm not good at so I want to grow in it.

That's great.

But you also have to make your choice as a leader of is that the right fit for the team and is that what the team needs?

And really balancing how do I make sure each individual feels like they're being managed for their own best growth while getting maximum potential out of my team.

Yeah.

So as you kind of went from kind of want to drill in on like going from manager to director for a moment because I, you know, I, and I, I get, I'm really curious about these leadership transitions.

The, the, it's.

First of all it's really easy to focus in on talking about first time leaders.

Right.

There's, it's probably one of the biggest learning curves is going from just caring about your own output to, to your point, you know, the design of the team and development, engagement and output of others.

And then you get that next level, you go up to the next level from there.

Right.

And most companies, even if they do have some level of leadership development, it is a proactive potentially you know, activity of trying to send, you know, get enough of a, you know, 10, 20 people, you know, to you know, afford a class.

Yeah.

Of some kind.

But what, what is often not done is any, you know, particular focus on your first day in the new job.

You know, after having been Promoted.

Right.

It's sort of in most companies and it just is what it is to have this sort of like, you know, the people, you know, the players.

High five.

Congratulations.

Get in there, Tiger.

You know, and you're, you're sort of left to the whims of does your boss have the time to coach you and teach you how to stop being a manager and start being a director?

Or, or your HR person, do they have the time, inclination or knowledge to teach you how to stop being a manager, start being a director?

So I just would be curious, you know, when you think about that first jump for you, how did that go?

And, and what was, what were some of the hardest things to let go of as you stepped into being a director in order to kind of learn how and lead at that next level?

I love this question because my story is pretty interesting and I'm sure will sound familiar to others, right.

Because what didn't come about in this like super prescribed career path kind of way.

I'd made the jump to Miller Milling.

We were owned by a Japanese corporate parent who was excited to grow and that's why I went there.

So I knew that there was a chance to grow.

But then sometimes opportunities fall out of the trees that maybe you didn't expect a massive merger between two of our competitors, Cargill and ConAgra forming a new company.

Department of justice tells them they have to sell off X amount of mills.

They're looking for a quick business deal to get done.

So we became a really obvious partner as a one stop shop that could buy four mill and wanted to grow and do it close enough to the right price.

And this opportunity came really quickly and we had a really small team.

So we had to have this small team that's doing day to day execution, leap into doing due diligence and M and a work that I was not trained to do and really didn't have like a robust team for.

As we're working with partners in large companies who had whole teams working on this process and do it.

And that was one phase of the project that you were never quite sure how it was going to go until the deal gets done, the decision gets made and boom, it's, we got 60 days and we're going to be a brand new company that's four times the size that we were.

And in the midst of that, without saying things that I probably can't share too publicly, I would say there was a bit of a leadership crisis, if you will.

There was some external, there were some, most of the Leaders within the company were from the original company that was purchased in this like two year transition phase.

Now they were going to grow definitely some parent company and leadership things happened there where there was a really short period where that big, you know, I would say like vice president sort of C suite level of leadership was out of the company for a minute.

And there was three of us young guys who went, had gone from manager to director all of a sudden because we were going to direct these new teams but the people who were directing maybe weren't hired yet.

And all of a sudden we had to make those choices and try to land teams in a framework of what's going to be permanent and what's going to be temporary.

So making that shift while making sure all of our flour mills kept running the prices that good product customers are being served and trying to set everything up for success of what we know will be a crisis that gets solved.

But with a little bit of an unforeseen timeline we really, I went from I was managing a team of two to three small people.

Now all of a sudden I was hiring and onboarding almost like a peer, some high level employees to do higher level P and L responsibility tasks while still managing a small team of two to three people who handle like a lot of merchandising assistant type work, accounting level work.

And then also by the way we need this other staff and what we're hearing from our leaders at the top in this crisis is we don't know the answer.

So it's gotta be temps.

And so let's go onboard team temps through an agency and kind of map out all the functions that have to get done.

While a lot of the pre work was scrapped and we were figuring it out on the fly.

And so that was really my first wake up call around sort of that staff skill system environment of okay, I have to take a very not prudent solution of employees that we won't get chances to do like in depth interviews on and probably won't be a long term fit.

But how do we manage them to get the work done?

And I had to very quickly go through my own journey of I've had, have not had leadership training that prepared me for this.

But what do you do?

So you google things and find things like the Eisenhower matrix where you're setting aside your task and doing your just do it and really starting to think about how do I plan my day versus letting my day run my life and trying to be intentional about am I making time for leadership?

Am I making Time for day to day tasks.

Am I making time for future planning and really getting prescriptive about how I manage my day to make sure I can get all that done.

And I think that was really a wake up call for me.

And then to have this broad mix of personalities and skill levels and really understanding that leadership at the end of the day is really a people role.

It's a people to people role and you have to manage the relationships.

And I try to avoid sports analogies where I can, but it reminded me so much of sports in my time growing up playing sports of we all have a shared goal.

How do we get to the same goal with a very vast group of skill sets, group of experience and how do we go get it done?

And that was my really first introduction to it.

And it was definitely fast and scary and hard and maybe took a couple of years off my life.

But I think I learned so much in that moment that would set me up for success in my future.

And I think just that that sort of baptism by fire prepared before, holy cow, if I ever got the chance to do this prescriptively, what would I do different and how do I bring that forward to every role I have?

Yeah, fascinating.

So you really have this kind of opportunity to probably fast track some learning around how one runs a business versus just how one manages people and this process.

Right.

Because if you were now involved in due diligence on, you know, acquiring a number of mills and ultimately some org design, yada yada, you know, was that, is that a fair characterization that you kind of had this probably rapid learning around kind of enterprise leadership and P L and.

And you know, like how would I. I mean just to keep it super simple, just top line, bottom line thinking, right.

That you might not have otherwise, you might have gotten to that later in your career without maybe being at a smaller place that kind of afforded that opportunity.

For sure.

It's a thing I've learned how to.

To say it now actually through the opportunity to lean back into coaching.

Being older and definitely a soccer term of they say it more in soccer than other sports.

But the encourage your players to be brave, to take risks and to take chances.

And I've been asked so many times in my career what made you leave General mill.

And it was really, it wasn't just about leaving a place.

And I think this is really good advice I got actually from a retired person at General Mills that was a friend of my father's that I was able to reach out to some for some advice when I was considering that decision.

And he said, I think an important thing in life, John, is whether it's your employment or your work or your personal life, make sure you're running to something and not from something.

So he really encouraged me to be like, you have an opportunity.

It sounds interesting, but let's not make sure you're looking at that just because you're like, don't love what you're doing, or we're disappointed in what this role was like, make sure it's really something that's going to be good.

And so I think I. I did do that.

It took six months of talking with a new company to come to the decision to leave.

And I really got to the point where I feel like, yeah, this is what I want to do and I want to go.

And then by being brave and jumping into that in a decision that I think a lot of people are kind of surprised at the time that I made and as well, I still get a lot of questions about today was once you determine it's right, you're never going to know the answer fully.

I think you do have to be brave and take the leap sometimes.

And I think just being a curious person, being willing to take the le and take some risks, has put me in positions where I just got to learn way, way more than I would have had.

I just stayed comfortable.

But I think that's a thing I challenge myself a lot on, too.

And that lens has shifted as I've gotten older and getting into other leadership positions are, what are you doing that keeps you comfortable?

And what are you doing that's giving you growth?

And I think of my.

My own path here at Puris here, it's really small and lean and fast.

And when I first came in, there were some stressors around that.

And I think I had to really question myself and reframe my own mindset of saying, hey, I took this role knowing it would be challenging, and I took it to grow.

And if I'm feeling consternation about what that growth curve feels like, I have to remind myself this is actually what I wanted.

These are ways for me to challenge my own skill set.

To truly step up and say, this is why I came here, was to learn how to do just this moment.

It may not look exactly like you imagined it in your head, but you have to be brave.

I took the leap already.

I'm in it now.

It's time to swim.

Yeah.

And I think just constantly reminding myself of that mindset and leading into growth, even sometimes when it is scary, has Served me well throughout my career.

Yeah.

So here's a question I have and then I might want to kind of dig back into some, you know, dig back into some stuff.

Yeah.

What do you see as the big difference between sort of the VP level and above roles that you've experienced like that that truly separates them from director, manager, you know, level experiences you've had?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think like I said before, in the modern world there's always more player coach these days than there used to be.

And I think with the advent of technology and teams and remote management and now AI like I feel like that evolution is going to keep changing.

So I do feel at times like my day to day execution maybe hasn't shifted that much.

I still have some big responsibilities on day to day execution but what I'm being asked to do is much more high level strategic leadership in addition to it.

And I think I've really learned here and been challenged by some great leaders here who've had to learn their own hard lessons along the way.

I think of yeah, that's really part of the job is accepting that you are going to have that same level of cushion and you need a higher level of strategic thinking and leadership and time management and project management and have to be making sure that you are there to back up a bit.

I would say there's a really easy thing to do.

I think the trap a lot of managers and directors fall into where you can easily say I've got a fault, but it's very easy to blame up and say I've got a fault, but here's why and this is it in the system and there's sort of this.

There can oftentimes be a sort of an imagined they.

When you get to the VP role and the C suite role or when you're in a board meeting you look around and realize like, oh, this is just like every other meeting.

These are all just humans.

Everybody here you have people with great skills and experience and backgrounds but it's not necessarily always a smarter room or a different room.

It's in the same room asking harder questions, looking for better results.

And I think there is just some of that acceptance of yes, these jobs are well rewarded because they're hard, they expect more from you.

And I think also really leaning into that strategy without losing sight of the execution.

And I think that's personally been a challenge for me as a guy who's curious, likes to wear a lot of hats and part of that execution is training others to do what you do so that you can delegate faster and sooner.

And I think that's a huge part of success I'm learning at this level is how do you delegate?

How do you set your employees up to succeed when you delegate?

And how do you preset the structure and expectations with your team so that they know some things may come at them that are unexpected?

You know the places it could go.

Can you have a pre prescribed plan to know where your own overwork flow can go when you have to say, okay, we're making a big business decision that's going to take up a lot of my time.

So this piece of execution needs to go to you for here until now and here's the expectation.

And I think being able to properly delegate and move fast really requires you to have done all the setup well.

Do you have the right people in the right place?

Do you know which employees can handle those sort of drop in tasks and step up tasks and spreading out of work when you have to delegate and pivot as a leader?

Because I think that's always going to happen at this level and the faster and better you could do it without that complaint going up and also reminding your team that hey, when you're complaining about the system or the they, that's me, I'm in the room, I've got the power, I've got the authority to make that change.

So if you've got a problem, let's discuss it, let's discuss how to fix it.

And that's a big thing I lean on in sort of that team setup is making your expectations know known to your team.

Big thing on my plate is I expect I'll say that my employees know their stuff.

I don't use the word stuff but maybe a chance.

We're not on a podcast, but I expect them to be subject matter experts.

That's why they're in the role that they're in.

So that when something that's in their expertise goes to them, I expect them to know how to execute.

And then also just that understanding that highlighting a problem above your level is not hard to do.

Trust that we're all seeing the problem.

But what I would love to see is if you have a problem, does it come with a suggested solution.

And that was actually like one of the favorite things I've learned in my career is it was actually from a customer of mine, a gentleman who was leading was called Coffee and Bagels but Bagel Brands at the time leading their supply chain.

We were at their summit, he gave a great speech on how on Japanese subways they use their butt to back in when it's really busy on a subway car.

And he said, I expect all my employees to use their butt and my suppliers as well too.

You can come to me with a problem, but I want to come with a but.

Here's the solution here, the recommended path of action.

It may not be what we ultimately agree on, but I want my employees to be thinking at that level of yes, I see the problem.

Here's what I would do about it, given my own tools, and here's what I would suggest.

Now let's discuss it at the group.

Is your suggestion right?

Are there other suggestions in the room, other ways to solve, but at least that you have a guidepost and know that they've put the thought in to not just say, oops, someone made a mess, he's going to come pick it up.

It's, here's this mess, here's how I think we should do it, here's how we can go.

And I think that really helps that strategic management to execution window happen faster.

And the faster that can happen, the less times everyone's going to waste, the more efficient your team looks, the more successful you'll be as a leader.

Yeah, I got, I had very verbose answer.

No, that was great.

I had similar advice at one point in my career.

The organization was in a lot of flux and I had taken on a giant project that had never been done before.

And somehow I was like semi reporting straight into the VP of Ops.

And you know, I, I came to her one day with something and she just said like, she just leveled with me.

She was like, you don't have a lot of time, I don't have a lot of time.

If you're gonna bring problems, I need you to bring at least one, if not multiple solutions to the same conversation.

Cause in, you know, she was just pretty direct about like, I'm not taking your problem on, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

So here's a question, you know, what have been some of the hardest things you've had to let go of in order to be most effective at, you know, at a given level?

You know, just kind of curious, you know.

Yeah, I think I do have my own level of.

I've learned a lot through experience and always felt maybe lacked a bit of a formal training along the way.

That would be great.

And I think I'll, I think that'll resonate with almost anyone in corporate world.

You get given this job and sometimes the training isn't what you'd Expect and you have to learn on the fly.

So you end up learning to do it your way, which is fine, which is great.

But can you communicate that?

Can you put that into training materials to truly hand off tasks?

I really have struggled with delegation.

I think I've always done a great job and been seen as, like I said, maybe struggling with the finite details around execution, but I can take on a really crazy broad scope.

So I think trying to not over commit and when over committing, trying to delegate, I think has been such a huge task.

And from a personal level, I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, but I'm oftentimes doing things in an unorthodox way.

So really teaching myself how to delegate, how to hand off tasks.

I'm sure if you ask my employees today, they might say that that's not always perfect.

I think that's still a skill I'm working on to this day yet.

And I think also being vulnerable with your employees I think is helpful too.

One of the things I say in my intros and when I talk to my employees or even I did this as a youth coach as well too, and really think of it as a personal philosophy in my life as I have these three big pillars that I think are really important to any conversation you're having.

Whether you're in sales, managing an employee, talking to a supplier.

It's, I want to always be a good listener first, because I think if you are a good listener, people are going to talk to you.

And that can mean different things for different people.

But being a good, active listener and building your relationships to where you can hear and listen and then truly active listening so you can understand people's problems, understand where you can add value and all that is a super important setup to the third and most important pillar, which is executing on that value add with clarity and transparency and follow through.

And I'm usually really honest when I give that speech and say I struggle with that third part, as I think most people do.

But I also want to be like the most honest guy in the room about my struggles there and call me out and hold me accountable as well too.

And I think from the top, that really helps to drive that culture of accountability, of saying, yeah, I was supposed to do this, I said I would take it on, I did the classic baseball means said I got it and I let the ball drop.

Let me own it, let me fix it, or I should have delegated.

I'm going to ask you to fix it and being vulnerable about it.

And I think that just gives the license to every one of your employees to do the same.

And then it can become very quick and transparent to have this level of trust.

And I think if a book I'd recommend to any leader is the speed of trust because I think that trust is really the key to, if you want to get to high output management of your team, you have to have trust because that, that trust, when somebody gives you a piece of information and says this is true or not true, if everybody in the room has that same belief structure that really truly is true, like it's so much easier to make changes and move and pivot and you can just accomplish so much more.

So you've talked about how, how much player coach kind of execution is still required of leaders at every level.

So I'd be, I guess I'd be kind of curious, right?

Because traditionally I've found that is also the hardest thing for leaders to let go of.

Right.

And so yeah, I guess I just would be curious how do you find or like manage the tension between, you know, sometimes the execution is the easy thing in a certain way.

Like pay attention to spend your time on, you know, there's more, I don't know, gratification or instant results that come from execution than necessarily one more meeting about strategy and mission.

So I guess I would be, you know, acknowledging that it's the reality for a lot of leaders.

How do you just kind of walk that line between attending to the execution that you need to versus might want or like or enjoy doing?

Yeah, I think one thing I've really seen, and actually I've really learned a lot here at Puris from our leaders is from a top down leadership level really having that great annual planning of what are we strategically as a group of leaders trying to solve for this year?

What are those most impactful things to the business and then agreeing on we use the OKR framework here or objectives and key results that really drive to a lot of sort of those strategic project paths along the way.

So it's really, can you set a game plan to turn your strategy into execution?

And I think that's one thing.

I think as we're growing as a company here, I'm growing as a leader, our leaders are growing too.

But I think we've really made a great leadership turnaround on that of understanding that these big ticket items that need to get done that we're thinking of from a high level strategic standpoint, like that's just another form of execution.

It's a form of execution on a higher level or maybe you're executing for the future, but my team's a great example.

We are specifically responsible for the number one driver of our cogs in the in the company, the cost of P's.

And so the day to day execution really matters.

Pricing, mix, volume, timing, the logistics, keeping the cost down like those little details around that matter every day to our week by week, month by month, bottom line.

But if I'm not making the moves for a strategic setup for the future, for adding for an example, adding Rails versus things that are coming in via truck and establishing the partnerships that can help drive all those costs much lower.

Really having the framework to understand like where's my skill set going to bring the most alpha to the bottom line there.

And I think you have to be a high level thinker to know that and prioritize it.

And the framework is good.

And then also day to day making sure that those projects stay on task.

And I think that's really your job as a leader too is we have our huddles, we have our meetings where we handle the day to day work.

Are we also having the one on ones and the check ins and the strategic project management that's making sure all those bigger picture tasks are getting done that lead up to the strategic vision getting executed.

So I think there's taking the time to build the strategic execution right, doing the analysis around that.

But then really how do you take that strategic framework and turn it into execution work and jobs to get done that your team can tackle in small bites and small pieces and really making sure that you've got your time management in place, not just your timing, your day but how are you setting up those day to day huddles, those day to day meetings.

Is your week planned out?

And I think I've really seen it done.

It's funny, I wouldn't have expected it, but I think I've seen it done better than any place I've been at here at Pure S. And I think it could have to be a small sort of mid sized company that's gotta be a disruptor and gotta figure out how do we take a unique niche product and turn it into a profitable business.

Really the curve of failure is quick.

So you either have to do it right or you're not gonna exist.

And so I think we do it really well here and we're getting better at it all the time.

But it's really taught me valuable lessons about there is a playbook for how to do this that others have done, books you can read.

So Find whatever works for you would be my advice to anybody.

And make sure you have a framework where you are planning your time to do the high level work and then the framework to turn that.

Okay, we've all agreed on this decision.

What actually needs to be done to go get there and get it done.

And really turning that strategy into execution is something I really feel like this role has challenged me more on than anyone I've ever been at and really given me a great framework to go on and springboard off of that to be a leader of anything else and lead a team of high level leaders as well too.

To say we need this framework to turn strategy into product.

Nice.

Well, just to wind us down, I asked everybody to come with a couple of pieces of advice.

And so we talked a bit about it already and I'm sure my listeners are tired of my preamble on it, so I'll just go cut right to it.

Which is for those leaders out there who are listening, who are maybe still thinking, you know, ahead and wanting to grow and get to another level or two in their career.

You know, what's, what's your, what's one piece of advice you have for leaders who are still seeking that next promotion?

Yeah, I think a big piece of advice I have is in your own, outside of the company you work in, what is really your own philosophy?

I've kind of developed those myself throughout my career.

I've.

Here's a thing that's true for me in my home life, in my work life, whether I'm selling to somebody or managing somebody, those, those three big pillars I talked about.

I think having that framework can help you make every decision.

Right.

And then I think if you have that framework, it can help you make decisions there.

So I would think, really think about your own personal philosophy, how you go about it, and how you can distill that down to your team and then find the framework for you that allows you to take ideas like strategy and turn them into work.

Because I think you really do have to do that at every level.

You're.

It's just the execution versus strategic thinking knob gets turned as you go up.

But it's really the same.

The skill set isn't as vastly different as you imagine.

It's finding the tool then to.

At the end of the day, everything has to distill down to tasks that get executed.

So how do you then take your time you spent on strategic framework, have a framework to drop it into?

So you can tell I'm a person who thinks about strategy and thinks about frameworks for strategy.

And I think that's just really important to spend some time write it down on paper.

Was your strategic framework, your philosophies of how you think that can help you really align everything you're going to do to execute in your day to day and show that potential that you can make the next leap.

All right.

And so for those leaders who just had that promotion, right, they're just starting their first week or month or quarter at a new level.

They were just a director, they're now a vp.

What's your best advice for them to help them stick the landing?

I think really it's a little bit over the top to say but I think more and more true in today's world is that sometimes the training is not always going to be there.

So I would say be resourceful.

We have tools we never had before.

You have AI, there are leadership books abound.

There are different ways to listen to them.

Do your damn homework.

There are methods and frameworks out there available for you to adopt that by no leaders that will help you win.

So if you don't want to create your own, pick up a book, read it, figure it out and you're going to have to do some of that outside of your, outside of your work week if you want to excel.

Because if you're not doing it, somebody else is.

And I think that's as true as it ever was.

And I think for leaders especially in this age more than ever where there's we have some generational gaps at work, we have different working styles and new technology.

Managing the change curve is as important as ever too manage it with yourself first like lead in, adopt the modern tools, figure out how to be as efficient as possible and then that'll just give you more time in your day to do everything.

And that's man really a piece that I have learned, you know, at times by mistake, at times through experience and at times by intention.

But that managing your day and your timepiece, if you think about how you want your team to run, how you want your framework to be set up and how do you go from a very task oriented stand up meeting to a more strategic project management check in meeting, think about the pace that has to play out at for you to be a success and then be brave.

I think even if you, your boss might not care too much if you're changing huddles and structures.

Don't be as scared, don't be scared to upset the norm to make sure you get to the framework that's going.

To work for you.

And then as you're making that change, know your employees are all gonna go through that change curve too.

And managing the change curve is about managing people and personalities and I think just encouraging them to be brave as you are being the easiest way to do that.

You can tell people that, you can show em that.

But if you just lead by example, it happens really fast and builds a lot of trust with your team.

Nice.

John, I can keep talking to you, but I wanna release you back to the wild.

Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your journey, your story, your lessons learned.

Just kind of really appreciate, you know, being able to hear, you know, direct from someone who's living and breathing the leadership life.

So thank you so much for coming on today.

I hope your listeners find any interesting pieces of nuggets.

If you have one and you heard one, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn networking.

Connecting with people is one of my favorite things to do, so I'm excited to chat with anybody about it.

If they got questions about what I said or want to learn or you disagree, Happy to hear from you.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Tell John Kent sent you.

Yeah.

All right, John, take it easy.

Appreciate it.

See ya.

That brings us to the end of our episode.

Thank you for listening.

I'd encourage you to head on over to my website, Kent Coach and start a conversation with me there.

Or check out my Promoted leader toolkit at Kent Coach Toolkit.

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Till next time, take it easy.